Employment Reform or Pupil Control? Desegregation, Bilingualism and Hispanic Staffing in the California Public Schools.

Richards, Craig

Changes in California's public school Hispanic teacher employment practices and the contribution of bilingual categorical funding and regulations to these practices in the period 1967-1980 are described and interpreted. The paper attempts to clarify these related issues of fact and interpretation by first describing the relative levels and direction of change in the employment of Hispanic teachers; second, describing the specific contribution of bilingualism to increased employment of Hispanic teachers; and finally, interpreting these changes in light of the social reform and social control theses. The social reform thesis argues that existing political institutions are capable of enforcing structural social reform, whereas the social control perspective states that schools cannot be expected to become significantly more equal than the larger society. The findings show that the employment of Hispanic teachers has not kept pace with the increase in Hispanic pupils and that the employment patterns increased the presence of Hispanic educators in Hispanic segregated schools and communities but not in Anglo segregated schools. Policy implications are that only a concerted planning effort directed at the state level and supported with significant increases in state and federal funding will reverse this trend. (Author/MLF)